Just pretend for a moment that the United States was a single person, bent on ruling the world and hording all the wealth and prosperity for itself. That this person was pure evil and did not care about the lively hood of any country it invaded. Wait a second, right... America has a hard enough time gaining enough consensus to elect a single official let alone concoct some multifaceted, complicated scheme to have absolute power over the world. Oh, what's that you say...American tax dollars have been spent attempting to help rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan rather than exiting the country and letting them rebuild on their own? Weird!
Since this is the internet, let's take a deeper dive into the world of internet geopolitical commentary on the subject and see if we can really get to the root of their perspectives on Iran. The best that I can tell is that there are three major camps , voicing their concerns for all the world to hear:
- Sweep-and-clear American - "Where is the Straight of Hormuz? Doesn't matter, just blow all of Iran up and figure it out later. They took our jobs......"
- David-versus-Goliath Iranian - "We don't care how much the Americans spend on their military, our advanced 30ft speed boats and extensive history of armed combat will dominate the battle field and bring honor to our country. Just because I'm a sociopath doesn't mean that you're right"
- Random internet banter aka Hippie - "I read/saw this [insert random form of media here] that said America does what ever it wants when it wants. Those dirty Americans even went to war and weren't able to find any WMD so therefore they are the responsible for all diplomatic failures in the past 10 years"
If you've made it this far in reading, you probably get as much joy from reading uninformed articles(much like this one) that take some totally unrelated element and apply it to current situation hoping to go undetected to the ignorant masses that wander the internet - call it a passion, but disproving people on the internet is right up there with free beer in my book. Let's take a crack at it!
Each of these factions in some way, shape or form rationalizes that their view on the matter is the correct one - they have to be right, right? I think, therefore ev'r body else is wrong. Didn't we go through that fiasco a few times in the course of history? Not even going to go there.
I'm not even going to bother trying to analyze the first faction list above other than there is a certain belief that a pipsqueak of a country (cough Iran) is making a big stink over nothing (well it's something but I'll get into that in a moment) but that doesn't matter and America should just flex the arm of the most expensive military in the world to prove a quick point. Step one, wipe Iran off the face of the world. Step two, profit.
Iran has always been looking to steal the show on the world stage saying "HEY EVERYONE, LOOK HOW GREAT IRAN IS!" with shenanigans like claiming to have hacked data feeds controlling surveillance drones, sentencing a supposed CIA operative to death with no evidence or the best yet, the iconic war games (and associated statements of "American acts of aggression" essentially being acts of war) with toy boats. Because the rest of the world wants me to stop enriching uranium I'm going to keep enriching past the 1% mark (all that is required for supposed medicinal purposes) to see how high I can go. More on the uranium later.
Internet hippies are just the mindless masses that wander from page to page, taking the skewed views on often a single source of media, labeling it as their own view, without actually thinking for themselves in most cases. Don't fret if you fall into this category - it's not really all that bad unless you're voting for elected officials...hey, wait a second. Most of you won't fit into any of the these categories, but then again you probably don't troll around the internet posting on random new articles either.
Now that I've probably offended most of you, let's get to what this discussion was actually about - Iran's quest for weapons grade uranium and the slaps on the hands received to date. The new stiffer sanctions, although spearheaded by the US, are meant to tighten the vice on the political figures within Iran and prevent war rather than make it. Playing devil's advocate, you're probably sitting there thinking "but it's hurting the people of Iran at the same time, America doesn't care about them, just about the oil exiting Iran." - now you're thinking like a hippie. There is more at stake in the game of cat and mouse currently being played than just dollars or barrels of oil - the entire region would be in shambles should Iran achieve in its ability to gain weapons grade uranium.
To date, no nuclear nation has ever gone toe-to-toe in war with another nuclear nation so the outcome of that Iranian achievement is up for debate. What is known, is that Iran has the utmost hatred for Israel (US is in there too) and a government that isn't known for it's stability in terms of foreign policy or freedom of the people. There is a certain expectation that should Iran get to the point of fully enriched uranium that they would do bad things with it, but who could blame them? It's the ultimate insurance policy if you're looking to retain power in a failing country or twist the arm of the nation that has goods and services other than oil exports to hear you on the global level.
Please use some common sense when posting on larger scale issues in a public form. Most of you out there sound like idiots to the educated groups that rarely make their way around the internet. If you can express all sides of an argument without being jaded, you're probably well enough versed on the subject to voice an opinion - everyone else should be beaten with sticks...
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